On the Job
by Princess Alyra
Summary: Aurors Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy have just been given an important undercover mission. The problem? They have to pretend they're a couple.
1. Mission Impossible

Very spur-of-the-minute decision to post this now. I started this chapter around two years ago, quit, and continued it last week. Sorry for anyone who clicked on it hoping for hardcore slash, because while there will be much suggestiveness and plentiful awkward moments, the _real _slash action doesn't get too heated. But it's there. :P I promise!

Please leave some feedback if you read this! Oh, and if you see any mistakes, let me know and I'll change them (once I get back from vacation, mind).

Enjoy!

* * *

The Ministry of Magic, referred to as the MoM by most employees, had changed remarkably over the past few years. It had never moved its location, for there were precious few places it could remain undetected, even with magic, but the building itself had been under construction for the best part of four summers.

A fresh coat of paint had been applied to the walls, which were now a stunning sky blue. Directly above the main entrance were huge yellow letters that read 'MINISTRY OF MAGIC,' which of course was only visible to the wizard's eye. Muggles who happened to walk by would only see a plain stretch of blue, though Minister of Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt had, for some weeks now, been considering a charm that would show a cautionary message to the nonmagical community. This wasn't entirely necessary, for any Muggle who attempted to open the door would find it impossible to move. In fact, it wasn't a real door at all.

It was the phone booths lined up on either side of the door that allowed ministry employees to enter their workplace. Every one of them had an out-of-order sign taped to the glass, but anyone who wore a blue-and-yellow badge knew to ignore the warning. The young man that now slid open the door had no badge, but nevertheless he picked up the receiver and dialed 64224. It was two numbers shorter than the average phone number, but that didn't seem to bother the man. He waited patiently until he heard a cool female voice.

"Welcome to the Ministry of Magic. Please state your name and business."

"Harry Potter," said the man, "responding to a message from the Head Auror."

"Thank you." There was a soft whirring noise, and a badge slid down the coin return chute. Harry Potter picked it up and pinned it to his robes. It read 'Harry Potter, Auror Business.' As with any badge, he pinned it to his chest so that people could see it, even though he knew he would be recognized anyway.

Harry smiled as he remembered the day Arthur Weasley had first brought him here. He had been nervous and sick to the stomach, terrified of the upcoming hearing in which it would be decided whether or not he could continue attending Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. How long ago that all seemed now.

Making sure the streets were deserted, Harry pressed the operator button. With a jolt, the London scenery disappeared, and a small girl who was walking by hand-in-hand with her mother could have sworn that the now empty telephone booth had just had a man in it.

When using the booths, there was a always a risk that Muggles might notice the Ministry visitor vanishing into thin air, but as Harry still to this day detested Apparating, he had no other option. Inette Westley always insisted he was being ridiculous, but he ignored her; comfort over convenience, he always replied with a pleasant grin.

"Mornin', Harry," a bored-looking man greeted him as he stepped out of the phone booth. "I thought you were off work today?"

"So did I," Harry replied with a half-shrug. "Something important came up, I expect. Can't imagine what - we've rounded up most of the Death Eaters, and I doubt I'd have been called to office if there was an attack. Probably Churchwell got wind of some rumor that she wants us to look into."

Vivian Churchwell, the current Head Auror since Kingsley became Minister, looked deeply into any whisper of Dark magic and the wizards that performed them. Harry was on call much more often than Ginny Potter would like, but that couldn't be helped; nine years since he had first been allowed to train as an Auror, and already he was highly respected and trusted with some of the top jobs. Of course, it might have had something to do with ridding the world of the most evil wizard ever to live. That _could _have contributed to a small portion of his career success.

Harry rode the elevator to the second level, stepping out into the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. A few people nodded his way as he ambled down the hallway, careful not to run into Astoria Greengrass, who was bustling past with a monstrous stack of papers in her hands, or step on Herbert Lansling, who appeared to be searching for something on the floor, all the while muttering to himself a long list of curse words and threats.

"Morning, Harry!" one wizard said cheerfully from inside an office. Harry smiled back at him and turned left through a door bearing a plaque that read "Vivian Churchwell: Head Auror."

Churchwell sat behind a desk, sorting through a small pile of unopened letters, running a hand through her dark, frizzy hair and making it all the more unattractive by doing so. Crumpled-up papers and quills and empty ink bottles were strewn haphazardly across her desk, laying both on top of and under the sheets of parchment and paper that were important enough to remain relatively unwrinkled, but decidedly not enough to be stacked neatly.

Across from her, occupying one of two chairs, sat a tall, pale man with white-blond hair and a pointed nose. Draco Malfoy had changed little over the years, save for an almost unnoticable thinning of the hair. It was hard for Harry to refrain from smirking at the knowledge that Draco was set on the path to going bald, while he, Harry, felt that his thick hair could never disappear entirely.

"Hello, Potter," barked Churchwell without looking up from the parchment on which she was scribbling away furiously. "Take a seat, will you? I'll be back in a moment." She snatched up the parchment, muttered a drying spell, rolled it up untidily and half-jogged from the room.

Malfoy reached out to grab an empty ink bottle and began twirling it between his fingers. "Any idea what she's brought us here for?" he asked, following the bottle's every move with his eyes.

"Not a clue." Having been working together for four years, Harry and Malfoy had no real choice but to be on speaking terms. "Speaking terms" was the most progress either had deigned to make; it was all that was required on the job, and even then it could be avoided with the proper precautions.

After a few minutes, during which Harry watched Malfoy's facial expression deepen with disgust the longer he stared at the desk, Malfoy finally pulled out his wand and muttered a spell. The less wrinkled papers all rose into the air and shuffled themselves neatly into an organized pile, falling lightly back down to settle in the only corner free of ink stains. The bottles that had once contained said ink swept themselves into a personal-sized garbage bin next to the desk, a bin that looked as though it had only ever been used to house the chewed remains of Drooble's Best Blowing Gum.

Looking slightly more satisfied, Malfoy settled himself against the back of his chair again, just in time for Churchwell to come bustling in. She frowned slightly at her desk, as though she couldn't figure out what was wrong with it, then shrugged and took a seat.

"How are you today, gentlemen?" she asked, and ploughed on before either could take a breath to answer. "I know I promised you both the whole weekend off, but promises are made to be broken, so here I am, fulfilling its purpose. Fact is, I have a job for the two of you, and that job's gonna mean you don't get any days off in the near future. In fact, look at freedom as an incentive; the faster you can crack this guy, the sooner you get to take a break. Mind, not a long one, we still need you."

Neither Harry nor Malfoy had the slightly clue what she was talking about. From how it sounded, though, Harry didn't have much inclination to learn, either. He hated rejecting missions, but this didn't sound agreeable to him in the slightest so far. Not to mention, he couldn't see Ginny feeling too happy about the "no days off" thing. Oh, she would let him go and pretend it was all well and good, and she understood about work and its responsibilities, but that didn't mean she would like it.

He didn't get a chance to say any of this, though, because Malfoy did it for him.

"And what about our personal lives?" he inquired dryly. "And what the hell are you going on about, anyway?"

One thing to be said in Churchwell's favor was that she handled bluntness and full-frontal rudeness quite well. Encouraged it, actually, which was very lucky for people like Malfoy, who cared little for the emotional well-being of others.

"Your personal lives will be put on hold for a while," she said dismissively. Okay, so the full-frontal rudeness thing wasn't always such a wonderful trait, if utilized by Churchwell herself. "And I'm talking about a mission that will become your life for the next... well, however long it takes you to nab this witch." She said "witch" like an insult, even though she was currently polishing her wand with the sleeve of her robes. "Inconvenient for you two, I know. But you're the only ones for it, and we really need to find out what she's up to, because whatever it is, it's definitely no good."

Harry looked at Malfoy. "And why does it have to be us?" he asked, wondering how in Merlin's name he and _Malfoy _were the two best suited for this. Anyone could handle what sounded like an under-cover mission, and he couldn't think what he and Malfoy had in common that would make a difference.

At this Churchwell managed to look both uncomfortable, pitying, and exceedingly evil all at once. "Well," she said, resting her elbow on the desk and somehow managing to upset a few of the remaining ink bottles, which Malfoy had presumably left because they still had some ink in them. Well, not anymore. "You see, the thing is, she... doesn't really _warm up _to most people. Feels like the general population will judge her; or so she says, I think it's more the other way around, but people these days tend to use prejudice to their advantage."

"And your point _is_?" Malfoy prompted impatiently.

The uncomfortable part of Churchwell's expression vanished, leaving pity, a bit of glee, and a whole lot of _evil. _"My point is, she has a girlfriend, and she refuses to mingle with anyone who even _might _have a problem with that. So the best way of getting remotely close to her is to send in the only kind of people she's willing to trust."

It was early for a Saturday, and Harry's brain was still adjusting to the fact that it had to work on a day he had promised to let it cool down. Therefore, it took him a minute to realize the implications of what she was saying. And even once he got that far, he still couldn't quite process exactly what he was hearing.

"You mean someone _gay_?" he said. Churchwell nodded, her lips twitching. "And you brought in _us_?"

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Malfoy half-shouted, gaping in horror at Churchwell and sliding a disgusted look at Harry. "Of all the men in the world, you think my best potential partner is _him_? That is the most revolting image I've ever had to witness, mentally or otherwise, in my life. And I was a bloody Death Eater."

Harry didn't have much time to be offended before Churchwell jumped in. "It's _got to be _you two," she said loudly, so neither could interrupt, and if they did their protests would be drowned, anyway. "Draco, everyone in Britain knows that the Malfoys were supporters of Voldemort. Alternatively, no one outside of people connected to you in some way know or really care what you did after the war. Thus, they'll have no idea that you're working for us."

"And me?" Harry asked dryly. "I think they might suspect that I don't approve of the Dark Arts whole-heartedly."

"Right. Which is why you're not going to be you. You get to make your hair look decent, ditch your glasses, hide that scar, and do _something _so your skin doesn't blind people when you're in bright lighting."

Harry thought this was extremely unfair, as Malfoy was at least three shades paler than he was, but he decided to take it as merely a means of disguising himself and as nothing to do with a personal attack on his pigmentation. Besides, there was something more pressing to point out.

"If I'm going to pretend I'm not me anyway," he said slowly, aware that words and their meanings didn't always hit his boss like they should, "then why, exactly, does it have to be _me _pretending I'm Malfoy's gay lover?"

The look Churchwell gave him was patronizing, but her voice wasn't. Harry doubted she could speak with anything other than her straight-forward-if-not-always-sensible style. "You're supposed to be a couple, right? Which means you've accumulated knowledge about one another over the past... say, five months of romance?" Harry flinched inwardly; Malfoy did the same visibly. "No one else in the Auror department really knows anything about Draco, but you two went to school together, spied on each other, know each other's deep dark secrets. You can have laughs about how one of you almost killed the other during Quidditch or something."

She paused, then winked mischievously. "Plus, the chemistry between you is boilingly believable."

Harry chose to ignore that comment, because thinking about it would likely mean he would never eat again without subsequently vomiting. "And no one else can sit down, play 20 Question with him, learn all his favorites and who he dreams of snogging?" He knew he sounded desperate. He didn't care; he _was._

"Not enough time for all that. You two already have a whole history built up; anyone else would have to invent a fake past with Draco. And remember, for all intents and purposes, the person he dreams of snogging is _you_."

She smiled rather demonically, clasped her hands, and spent a full five minutes deflecting the rest of Harry and Malfoy's arguments, which were getting steadily feebler the longer they tried. In the end, they both walked out of the office, seething and feeling ill and each holding a folder with all the mission details inside.

As far as Harry was concerned, nothing in this folder really mattered. The part of the mission he was most worried about surviving was the part that unfortunately he had already heard.

So wrapped up in his thoughts, he hardly noticed when he really did run into Astoria this time, sending her papers flying and earning a hard glare. He also failed to realize that he was going to have to explain the entire situation to Ginny once he got home.


	2. Counting Down

Chapter two is freshly finished, so here it is! :) Feedback is welcome, PLEASE point out typos if you see them (already caught a couple), and thank you to everyone who has already reviewed/alerted/favorited! Enjoy!

Also, got a little sentimental at the end. Hmm. That wasn't supposed to happen.

* * *

"You... and _Malfoy_?" Ginny said, which would have been understandable, except this was about the thirtieth time she'd said it. She had the midnight-blue folder open on the table, but the only thing she had registered so far was what Harry told her. Harry had given up responding to this particular question. This was fine, because Ginny didn't seem to want answers, bur rather just to express her disbelief in a question-like format.

Once Harry walked in the door and snapped out of his daze (in other words, Ginny kissed him and it suddenly occurred to him that any contact from now on would be masculine rather than his preference, feminine), he was forced to tell his wife what emergency had called him to office.

She reacted fairly well, if only because the whole concept hadn't sunk in yet. In fact, he was pretty sure the only words that registered properly for her were "Malfoy," "gay," and "couple." If that were the case, then she might actually be seeing a very different situation right now. Harry hoped not, because if she was, then she was not acting nearly as disappointed as he thought she should be to find out her husband was in love with another man.

Finally Ginny chose to expand her vocabulary beyond those three words. "So... what's going to happen? You and Malfoy make friends with this woman and then drop by once in a while to see what you can find out?"

Harry mentally kicked himself. He may have so far neglected to mention the part where he wouldn't be able to come home until after they'd finished all their snooping. He'd glanced over the papers a bit to see exactly what he should expect; he and Malfoy were meant to move into the neighborhood - in the same house, there was a whole paragraph making this part very clear - and show a little public display of affection where one woman in particular would be able to see. What they _couldn't _do was make any kind of contact that would endanger the mission if their targets found out about it. This meant letters marked "Ginny Potter" signed with "Love, Harry" were out of the question.

"Er," said Harry. "See, that's the thing. Malfoy and I..." And he went into detail about everything Churchwell had told them, making sure to stress how miserable he was and how if challenges to the death hadn't been outlawed by the Ministry in 1894, he would certainly have done so in order to prevent this tragedy. Ginny did not look amused in the slightest.

"And does Vivian realize that you have a _baby _to take care of?" Ginny seethed. "Forget that I'm pregnant and have articles to write - how is it fair to James to take his father away when he's barely a year old? And what happens if you're not back by the time I have the new baby? How bad can this-" she checked the files "-_Christina Reynolds _woman be, that you have to be dragged away from your family for Merlin knows how long?"

"She _is _supposedly plotting against the Ministry," Harry pointed out reasonably. "That usually warrants drastic action. After all, it's not that difficult to break in. And that's considering we weren't even there for criminal intent. Usually it's easier if your intentions aren't honorable." Ginny narrowed her eyes. "What? I work to fight _Dark wizards, _it's hard not to learn that kind of thing."

Ginny sighed.

"Look, if Malfoy and I can just figure out whatever the hell she's up to within a month or so, I'll barely have missed anything, right? James won't remember this part of his childhood anyway, and little Lily won't have been born yet."

"You're so sure it's a girl," said Ginny, lips turning up in a smile. Harry liked her considerably more when she smiled, because that meant he wasn't in danger of a Bat-Bogey Hex. As a general rule, anyway. There _had _been that one time... "What are we going to do if it's a boy? We haven't even thought of any names, just in case."

"We don't need to," Harry said confidently. "I can feel it." He placed his hand on her stomach, even though he hadn't meant it literally.

The moment was rudely interrupted by a fierce tapping on the window. A large eagle owl hovered outside, hooting loudly around the dead rat in its mouth. Without even glancing at the letter, Harry knew exactly who the owl belonged to, and was amazed Malfoy hadn't taught his bird proper etiquette. Surely it knew that speaking with one's mouth full showed a definite lack of manners?

He untied the letter with distaste, pleading with every deity he could think of that his eyes wouldn't be assaulted by little hearts and words like "sweetheart" or "erotic" - maybe Malfoy thought it was never too early to get into character?

To his relief, it became obvious quite promptly that the letter was merely one full of belittling remarks and condescending tones. Oh, he would miss this.

_Potter,_

_If you're not so much of a dunce that you failed to read the brief Churchwell gave us, you'll know that we have three days to say goodbye to everything that's even moderately good in life. Well, I do - not sure what in your pathetic life is worth saying goodbye to. _

_It horrifies me that I'm even writing on a piece of parchment with your name on it, so I'll get to the point. Whatever happens between now and the day we get to return to normal, make sure you keep one thought rattling around in that empty, disfigured head of yours: it's my duty to complete every mission the Auror department throws at me to the best of my ability. More importantly, if I _don't _perform to the best of my ability and Christina Reynolds gets suspicious, it'll be my life on the line._

_So don't you _dare _enjoy a minute of anything that I might be forced to do in that time. If I even almost sense that you're acting with anything other than strictly professional intentions, I will Apparate the hell out of there, march into Azkaban, grab the first Dark wizard I see and send him after you. _

_Bitterly,_

_Draco Malfoy_

While suffering the return of that ill feeling at the mention of intentions other than professional ones, Harry greatly appreciated this reminder that the world might possibly continue its steady orbit around the sun after all this was over. He and Malfoy could revert back to their reluctant tolerance, with no awkwardness _at all _after pretending they liked to do unspeakable things together, and Harry would get Hermione to wipe every unpleasant memory of contact from his mind with a simple _Obliviate._

And now, since James was napping and neither of them were busy anyway, Harry really needed to pleasure his wife. After all, they only had three days left together, and you could only talk about being gay with the man you hate for so long before it really starts to wear down on your masculinity.

* * *

The thing about infants was that they never seemed to understand the concept of _schedules. _You could lay them down for a nap and plan for them to remain napping for two hours, but they had a nasty way of failing to comply with your wishes. Over a year with just one child and Harry had already become well educated in this matter. Why was it he and Ginny were having another baby? Oh, yes - he wanted a little girl. For some reason he'd had this idea that they might be quieter and sweeter than little boys. That dream had been killed a few days ago when Victoire shoved Teddy into the lake when he said he didn't like her haircut. As a general rule, Harry liked to believe seven-year-old girls the height and width of his leg shouldn't be able to do that to boys two years older and twice their size.

Sometimes Harry wondered if life truly hated him, because not only did it give him something that could scream louder than a banshee, but it also stuffed it into a cute little bundle that never ceased to throw him off guard and make him think he was safe. Oh, the trickery, the injustice of it all. Still, he pitied Ginny even more than he pitied himself, because via the bondage of marriage she was now subject to whatever loathing fate felt for him. He felt extremely guilty every time Mr. or Mrs. Weasley looked him in the eye, like he didn't want to admit that he was responsible if Ginny developed dragon pox or spontaneously combusted. Both of which had almost happened once.

James was presently causing a three on the Richter scale, which was an achievement to be proud of, Harry supposed. How many parents could say their child's voice was equal to a small earthquake? On second thought, he knew several. Bill and Fleur, for example, or Molly and Arthur. It must have been in the Weasley genes, because the more he thought about it, he realized that all the children in the family were capable of instigating tremors in the Earth's crust.

"I don't know what he wants!" Ginny moaned, rocking James back and forth gently, which made him scream louder. He hiccupped, and for a moment they both thought it was over, but then he carried right on, slightly louder than before. _Does this kid think he has to prove something_? Harry wondered, glad for the first time that he got to escape this temporarily. _No. Not going there. Will miss even this after a week or two. Besides, Malfoy for James? Not a fair trade. _"Harry, go find his pacifier, or some juice, or... _something_. Just find something to make him stop!"

Harry obediently tracked down their diaper bag, magically enhanced to look very compact but really able to hold most of their possessions in as haphazard a manner as they pleased. He had convinced Hermione to teach him that spell after the war, since anything that allowed you extra storage space was a blessing for sure.

He summoned the pacifier, which took its sweet old time floating from the bottom layers of the bag, and then the juice, which was considerably closer to the top, and a roll of Spell-O-tape for good measure, even though he doubted Ginny would approve. She rarely let him use it in these situations, even though secretly he agreed that he never would.

The tape proved very tempting, though, because James didn't want his juice or his pacifier. Getting him to occupy his mouth with something else was not going to work, because he'd already found exactly what he wanted to do with it, and that was to make both his parents' eardrums bleed profusely.

"Come on, James, do you want to play with Dragon?" Harry suggested coaxingly, holding up the stuffed Norwegian Ridgeback Hagrid had given them at the baby shower. James took it, only to whip it back at him with quite a bit of force for a boy who only had one birthday under his belt, not counting the actual day of birth. "Could've just said _no_," Harry muttered, rubbing his nose.

"Harry, I think he's teething again," Ginny said suddenly, peering into James' mouth, which wasn't difficult as it was wide open. "Look, you can kind of see a couple coming up."

Harry hadn't believed the teething thing last time until the tips of his front ones actually broke through, but now he recognized the signs. This was decidedly bad, since there was nothing you could do for a baby whose teeth were coming in. Healer Chang (whom Harry hadn't realized was Cho until they were there for their first appointment) said potions were a last resort for children under three years old, especially pain potions, because if they got hurt again while it was still in effect, they might not notice it.

In other words, all they could do was wait for the crying to stop.

("Couldn't we just use _Silencio _on him?"

"No, that would definitely be considered bad parenting.")

The words "bad parenting" struck a chord of fear in Harry's heart. Never having had parents himself, and the Dursleys being such horrible examples, he really didn't have much to base his parenting skills off of. He _would _use Mrs. Weasley, but he was also horrified at the idea that he might become the mother of the family. There was always Mr. Weasley, but he still hadn't been given the chance to watch the man raise young children. He would surely reflect on Mr. Weasley's parental decisions when James grew up to be a terror like the twins, but for now he needed to figure out how _he _was as a father.

Except, this was going to be difficult if he was busy pretending to ravish Malfoy nightly. Toss in all the time he would spend throwing up and the occasional mission-related business, his life was completely booked for a while.

"Ginny, let me take him," Harry said suddenly, holding his arms out for the baby she was bouncing gently in her arms. She looked at him in surprise, probably wondering why anyone would willingly resign themselves to such a fate. Nonetheless, she didn't question it before handing him over. "You go ahead and do whatever you want, I can handle him on my own."

Ginny pretended to stubbornly refuse, then caved and ducked out of the room in the most casual manner possible for someone so inwardly desperate to escape. Harry looked down at his son and tried not to let his mind shatter from the yelling. How many moments of this did he have left?

Eventually James calmed down, and ("Go figure," Harry muttered) fell asleep not long after, even though it was now past the time he was supposed to wake up if they were still following the schedule. Gently he laid James down in the sea of cerulean blankets in his crib and left the room, careful not to trip on anything or cause other loud noises that would disrupt the finally achieved peace.

It was four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. He would be leaving on Tuesday at noon. That was less than a full three days' time with his wife, his son, and his friends. The clock was ticking.

Maybe if he destroyed said clock and eliminated its ticking, he wouldn't have to go anywhere. Yet somehow, he really doubted it.


	3. Failing Day Two

Sorry for the long wait! This story has decidedly stopped writing itself like it was before. I haven't given up, though! Thank you to all who have favorited/alerted/reviewed! And let me know what you think of this chapter, because I'm not too sure I like it, myself. As always, this is unedited, so pointing out typos would be much appreciated. Enjoy! :)

* * *

"Wouldn't it be less painful to just kill yourself?" Ron said in disgust, blindly stabbing at his eggs with a fork. Hermione glared at him reproachfully, though whether it was for stuffing his face like usual or nonchalantly suggesting suicide, Harry didn't know.

"Don't listen to him," she told Harry, ignoring her husband's eyes rolling pointedly in her direction. "I think it's great that you've got the chance to spend time with Malfoy!" Bits of egg were returned to Ron's plate as he started spluttering and choking, turning red in the face. Hermione handed him a napkin without so much as glancing at him. "It's the perfect opportunity to put the past behind you. You already kind of get along, so how bad could this be in the end?"

Harry stretched his arm across the table to smack Ron on the back. He stopped choking, but his face didn't reduce its rather violent shade in the slightest. "The operative words there were _'kind of,'_" he said dryly. "Meaning we exchange single syllables, avoid eye contact, and for the most part ignore the other's existence. I haven't forgotten that he's a pain in the ass. I'm not friends with him, and I sure as _hell _don't fancy him!"

Ron nodded vigorously, but Hermione was not fazed. She rarely was, which was both an endearing quality and an enormous character flaw. "I never said you did!" she protested hotly. "All I'm saying is, he's obviously not as bad as he was in school, or you wouldn't have been able to progress this far. So if you would stop being a complete _boy _about it and give him a chance, you might actually turn out to like each other a bit!"

"Fat chance," Harry said, echoing a sentiment made back when the Sorting Hat had spouted a whole lot of rubbish about House unity and getting past old rivalries... In his defense, this had nothing to do with hating Slytherins as a whole. This was about Malfoy being a git, and therefore not worthy of trying to get along with. "Besides, learning to genuinely like him is going to be _far _from my mind if I wind up having to snog him. I'm not going to be standing there thinking, 'Hmm, what a lovely personality he has deep down!'"

"Mate," moaned Ron, starting to push his plate away but deciding against it, "don't even go there." His face was still tinged red, but now quite green as well, and Harry was forcibly reminded of his aunt's garish Christmas decorations. He wondered how Ron would look in a Father Christmas suit.

"Believe me," Harry said sympathetically, "I don't want to." In truth, he'd been hovering outside the bathroom quite often since he got the news yesterday, just in case his stomach decided it could no longer handle the grotesque images his mind kept conjuring and decided to see if it could rid itself of the torture by emptying everything he'd consumed lately. Usually, all it accomplished was a foul taste in his mouth. He really needed to get past this phase, or his life was quickly going to become a living hell, quite like when Ginny was pregnant with James, and now with the unborn baby who was hopefully going to be a Lily. Maybe he was pregnant as well and just didn't know it.

The disadvantage to having dinner in a Muggle restaurant was that they had to tone down on the magical slang and references, which was especially difficult for Ron, who moaned about the Chudley Cannons' most recent loss every four minutes, and Hermione's occasional "Oh, for Merlin's sake Ron, have you ever heard of _chewing_?" didn't help, either.

Really, Harry ought to have been taking notes on what the other diners were saying, because after so long, he was starting to forget Muggle terminology for some things. He suspected this was partly because Mr. Weasley's tendency to use the word "eckeltricity" as often as he could was becoming endearing to him, and had begun slipping its way into his own conversations.

Then again, some of the things he heard when he tried listening to the other customers were far too disturbing to ever use in his head, let alone out loud, to the point where he thought maybe magical phrases were more appropriate after all.

"Honestly, _you're _acting more childish about this than Harry, and he's the one who has to deal with it," Hermione said when Ron continued to scowl and gloomily push food around his plate, pretending he was too depressed to eat. "Not that you're acting childish, Harry," she added gently when Harry opened his mouth in protest. He thought he was handling this very well, considering. He rather thought Hermione would be even more disgusted than he was if their situations were reversed, but he was wise enough not to say that out loud. She _did _have a fork in her hand.

"I'll be fine," Harry told himself and the others, though no one had actually inquired how he was feeling. "It's just that I've only got two days. Anything could happen in two days! What if James catches some incurable disease, or Ginny goes into labor-"

"She's only two months along-"

"Or since you said _anything _could happen, maybe in some happy and completely coincidental tragedy, Malfoy'll get hit by a car or trampled by thestrals or something."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Ron, I don't think there are any thestrals at Malfoy's place, and I wouldn't count on him to go anywhere near a place Muggle enough to have moving vehicles."

A passing waitress slowed down at the word "Muggle" and gave them a funny look. Ron glowered back at her. "What?" he barked, startling her so that the pitcher of water on her tray shook dangerously. "Got a problem?" It probably didn't help that he was wearing the Weird Sisters shirt Ginny got him for Christmas, which coined the phrase, "Do the Hippogriff," the band's number one hit.

The waitress huffed and sped away. "Good thing she's not ours, we'd have to leave her an enormous tip," Ron said brightly, shoveling more eggs into his mouth since he apparently forgot he was supposed to be too disgusted to have an appetite. Hermione refused to talk to him until they left the restaurant, and even then it was in a series of monosyllables and hand gestures.

Ah, Harry was so going to miss them.

He felt a strange urge to compile a bucket list, all items of which would have to be completed within the next thirty-six hours or so, until he remembered that he wasn't _actually _going to die on Tuesday. He was simply going to be in a place with a somewhat-former sworn enemy, away from all his friends and family with no way of contacting them, living in constant fear of discovery.

So, not _dead_, just in hell.

They found a deserted alleyway and Apparated back to their respective homes, Harry wishing fervently that he could be a Muggle just for the day and therefore have the perfect excuse not to Apparate. He didn't appreciate all the squeezing and suctioning, and felt a certain sympathy for the toilets on the receiving end of a plunger. He wondered if their experience was similar in any way, or if it just felt pleasant to them.

He realized that the bucket list idea might not be such a bad one when he looked back over the day and discovered that he'd done nothing out of the ordinary. Sure, eating out at some Muggle restaurant with his friends and somewhat neglecting the Statute of Secrecy was not an every-day event (the restaurant, that is; he broke the Statute of Secrecy so many times he almost turned himself in to... himself?), but it wasn't on the I'm-going-to-make-every-minute-count scale, either. It was more an I've-got-nothing-better-to-do-and-Ginny's-cranky-anyway kind of thing.

"If you want to do something extreme," Ginny told him an hour later, after he sat in the den doing absolutely nothing except for sighing occasionally, "go to the Cannons game tomorrow and streak on the pitch. If you're lucky, you might get in trouble with the Ministry for public indecency, get fired, and not even have to go on Tuesday."

Harry stared at her. One, he was pretty uncomfortable with the idea of displaying the few small (well, not _small_, he had to give himself _some _credit) privacies he had left to an entire stadium full of witches and wizards and their innocent children. Two, being involved with the Ministry, he knew firsthand that things like public indecency didn't really rate high on their list of crimes to prosecute. In fact, most of his co-workers would probably laugh hysterically if someone told them he - or anyone, really - had run starkers across the Quidditch pitch.

Hell, _Vivian _would laugh hysterically, and maybe give him a pay raise.

Someday, if he went on to become Head Auror, he would strive to be the polar opposite of his boss. He'd give people assignments that wouldn't result in assassination plots against him, but then he'd fire them for tardiness or for looking at him the wrong way.

He tried and failed to imagine himself doing this.

"I'm not going _starkers _in public," he scoffed. "Besides, I haven't got tickets for the game, so everything about it would be illegal."

She was staring at _him_, now. "You're Harry Potter," she reminded him, rolling her eyes. "You don't need a ticket to get into a Quidditch game. Just shove your bangs out of the way, they'll wait on you hand and foot."

Speaking of shoving, Harry had to do so to a sudden childish desire to stick his tongue out. Marriage was supposed to make a man more mature, but marriage to Ginevra Molly Weasley had turned out to produce quite an opposing result. He'd gone downhill in the past three years.

"I know what I'll do. I'll go sky-diving."

Ginny looked at him blankly.

"It's where you take an airplane a few miles off the ground and jump off with a parachute on your back," he clarified, though hearing himself say it suddenly made it seem like a terrible idea. "It's a Muggle thing," he added.

"You nearly died falling off your broom fifty _feet _above the ground!" she cried out, like this was the most insane idea she'd ever heard. Harry couldn't figure out why she was so disturbed by it - after all, _she _wasn't the one he'd suggested should jump out of a plane - until he realized that she probably had no idea what a parachute was. She probably assumed it was a couple of pipes for the washing machine.

"Trust me, it's perfectly safe." His mind flashed back to a news report once of a man whose parachute malfunctioned and wouldn't come out when he pressed the button. "Relatively. Most of the time."

Even he wasn't too reassured anymore.

Ginny stretched and yawned and got off the sofa. "I'm putting James to bed. When you've figured out something awe-inspiring to do with the next day and a half of your life, let me know." She stooped down for a quick peck on the lips (Harry swore she'd forgotten how to use her tongue since they got married) and left him. Alone. With nothing to do. Not that he'd been doing anything before, it just felt considerably more lazy when he was the only one doing nothing.

If not for that fact that it was only eight o'clock, he would have gone to bed.

While there was still that little bit of time left in Day Two, he considered it an utter loss. Yesterday hadn't been any better. Tomorrow was a Monday, which would normally mean endless work for him, but since Vivian was kindly giving him and Draco time off just before they dove in full-time, it meant one last completely free day to do whatever he pleased.

Day Two: Failure. Day Three: To Be Determined. He had the rest of the night to come up with something memorable to do tomorrow, or failing that, ways to make himself so violently ill he would have to be confined to the house for at least a week.

Either one worked, really.


End file.
